Instacart is an on-demand grocery delivery service serving 47 states. Launched in mid-2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, the platform offers same-day delivery of more than 100,000 products online ranging from fresh produce to life’s little necessities like laundry detergent.

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For Instacart to contend with others in the space – especially as Instacart grows its presence in the US and beyond – it must recruit and onboard an army of expert “Personal Shoppers.” This proved to be a challenge at first.

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In the beginning, the onboarding flow for contracted “Shoppers” was disjointed. New contractors applied online but then had to complete the process using traditional offline paperwork. This increased the rate of attrition and the risk of losing “Shoppers” to competitors.

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After their successful implementation of the HelloSign API into their product to simplify and speed onboarding, Instacart recognized that the majority of applicants were using mobile-devices to apply. Unfortunately, PDF forms like W-2s were difficult to fill out on mobile. This led to increased drop-off. ‍

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“We had staff in the office that would scan all of the documents as well as manage the process of getting the paperwork complete. We were losing qualified service providers before they’d even shopped their first order. It wasn’t a sustainable model as we looked to scale out the business,” said Instacart Co-Founder Max Mullen.‍